Nuclear industry's flagship plant delayed again

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Feature story - 10 August, 2007

Designers of Finland's Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor knew as far back as 2001 that it must be able to withstand an airplane attack. That's what the Finnish public was promised when the construction license was issued. Yet today, the company announced further delays in construction due to problems with reinforcing the reactor building to withstand an airplane crash.

Barrels with radiation sign and the names of companies intending to take a share in new nuclear reactor, Helsinki, Finland. Demonstration against planned fifth nuclear reactor to be operated by Teollisuuden Voima Oy (TVO) in Olkiluoto, Finland.

Olkiluoto is the only example of a European Pressurised Reactor
(EPR), the technology flagship of the nuclear renaissance, on which
construction work has been started.

The company responsible, TVO, also estimated that the1600 MW
reactor would cost 2.5 billion euros and take four years to build.
The costs now exceed four billion euros,

and the reactor construction is at least two years behind
schedule. The project was supposed to require no public subsidies,
but in reality is reliant on an export guarantee financed by French
and Swedish taxpayers, and a dirt-cheap loan from public banks.

"The nuclear industry says it has changed, and the EPR is their
flagship in claiming to provide a low-cost 'mature' carbon neutral
technology," said Greenpeace nuclear campaigner Jan Beránek. "The
chronic delays and setbacks at the Olkiluoto plant shows that this
new design carries all of the same old problems: complications,
escalating costs, chronic safety issues, delays and a lack of
transparency."

The companies involved, TVO and STUK should immediately make
public the list of quality and safety problems in the Olkilouto
reactor construction. There are now 1,500 listed quality deviations
and many of reactor components crucial to reactor safety have been
remanufactured or repaired.

"The warnings from the Olkilouto nuclear fiasco must be heeded
by other governments," continued Beránek. "Nuclear power is an
expensive distraction from real solutions to climate change. No
more time or money should be squandered on this deadly twentieth
century relic."